CVE-2026-23229: crypto: virtio - Add spinlock protection with virtqueue notification

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-02-18 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

In the Linux kernel, the following vulnerability has been resolved: crypto: virtio - Add spinlock protection with virtqueue notification When VM boots with one virtio-crypto PCI device and builtin backend, run openssl benchmark command with multiple processes, such as openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc -engine afalg -seconds 10 -multi 32 openssl processes will hangup and there is error reported like this: virtio_crypto virtio0: dataq.0:id 3 is not a head! It seems that the data virtqueue need protection when it is handled for virtio done notification. If the spinlock protection is added in virtcrypto_done_task(), openssl benchmark with multiple processes works well.

Affected products

Linux kernel: from 4.19.306 before 4.20; from 5.4.268 before 5.5; from 5.10.209 before 5.10.251; from 5.15.148 before 5.15.201; from 6.1.75 before 6.1.164; from 6.6.14 before 6.6.125 — fixed in 4.20, 5.10.251, 5.15.201, 5.5, 6.1.164, 6.12.72

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Linux kernel 4.20, 5.10.251, 5.15.201, 5.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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